A mounting arrangement is typically used in a communications product to orient or position a transducer or microphone within a housing. The mounting arrangement orients the microphone near an opening or apertures in the housing to provide the microphone access to a sound medium external to the housing. Optimal sound characteristics and reproduction of natural sound for a communication device would require acoustic and environmental sealing and an arrangement where a flat frequency response to a near field sound source is achieved. Typically, noise cancelling microphones have access to two ports and therefore are not noted for their environmental sealing ability. If a pressure differential microphone cartridge is used, the frequency response would vary with the acoustic loading on the two ports. Therefore, a balanced chamber would be desirable. In a radio housing which is substantially thicker than the thickness of the microphone cartridge, the microphone is mounted near the front grille to maintain high sensitivity to speech signals. The back port of the microphone is connected via a long channel in the radio housing as shown in FIG. 1B. Thus, this type of arrangement creates undesirable resonances in the frequency response of the microphone.
Furthermore, mounted microphones may use treated felt that secures to the housing or boot with an adhesive. Finally, silicone or other sealing material is typically used to maintain a weatherproof seal where the flexible lead wires exit the boot and microphone assembly. The selective application of adhesive to felt and silicone to the boot assembly becomes time consuming and awkward. These problems along with the problem of finding an efficient interference fit between the housing and the microphone/boot assembly leads to slow assembly time, increased cost, and poor quality. The present invention overcomes the problems described above while maintaining the acoustic and environmental sealing properties needed for a high quality noise cancelling microphone.